World Statistics Day 2015

October 19, 2015

2015 Theme: “Better data, better lives”

The second World Statistics Day falls on October 20. This year’s theme emphasizes the critical role of high-quality official statistical information in analysis and informed policy decision-making in support of sustainable development. It also reflects the importance of sustainable national statistical capacity to produce reliable and timely statistics and indicators measuring a country’s progress.

The UN General Assembly decided with resolution 69/282 to celebrate the day every five years from now on to strengthen public awareness of the important work that national statisticians carry out throughout the year.. Through collecting accurate, timely, and comparable data, the national statistical offices worldwide support a wide range of national and international activities, including development efforts that improve the lives of the poor and the vulnerable.

The Assembly also noted that 2015 marks the bicentenary of the birth of George Boole, whose work on the application of the principles of logic as a form of algebra underpins modern computer science.

The first World Statistics Day was celebrated on 20th October 2010, as decided in resolution 64/267, and was deemed an overwhelming success, with activities organized in more than 130 Member States and by at least 40 international and regional organizations and entities.The Department of Census and Statistics of Sri Lanka also celebrated this under the theme “Celebrating the many achievements of Official Statistics”.

Sri Lanka's World Statistics Day 2015 programme includes many events targeted at increasing awareness about official statistics amongst various user groups. The event “WSD forum 2015” will be held on 20th October 2015 at JAIC Hilton Hotel Colombo with the participation of Niroshan Perera, State Minister of National Policy & Economic Development, as the Chief Guest.

Special messages to mark WSD 2015 were issued by the President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe & State Minister of National Policies & Economic Development Niroshan Perera.

The Government official news portal is maintains by the New Media Unit of the Department of Government Information and it was titled "news.lk" and commenced in mid1996 and release to Internet from March 01st, 1997. News.lk publishes in three languages – Sinhala, Tamil and English.